IP addie equals phone number
p2pnet.net News- Back in April an Austrian court decided that legally a (dynamic) IP address was the equivalent of a telephone number, thus covered by the low(er) privacy protection regime for metadata, instead of the telecommunications law regime.
Now the Austrian Supreme Court (Oberste Gerichtshof) has confirmed this reasoning and decided that ISPs must hand over the names and addresses of their customers to rightsholders in case of infringement (decision July 26th).
The Supreme Court thought it irrelevant whether the IP address was static or dynamic, and that constitutional, data protection and telecom provisions were deemed no barrier to the obligation of the providers.
The Austrian music industry is jubilant and said the Supreme Court decision, which will take effect immediately, will help “in the fight against file-sharing, but also other law breaking on the internet”.
The head of the Austrian division of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Franx Medwenitsch, said in a press release [German]: “For law breaking there is definitely no anonymity on the internet, with which many file-sharers obviously speculated”.
Rik Lambers – CoCo
[Lambers is a former researcher at the Institute for Information Law, Amsterdam, who's now in transition to a new full time job in the field of IP/Internet law. He's also an associate member of the European INDICARE project, which researches consumer issues related to DRM.]
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